학술논문

Supercontinuum generation by saturated second-order nonlinear interactions
Document Type
article
Source
APL Photonics, Vol 8, Iss 11, Pp 116104-116104-10 (2023)
Subject
Applied optics. Photonics
TA1501-1820
Language
English
ISSN
2378-0967
Abstract
We propose a new approach to supercontinuum generation and carrier-envelope-offset detection based on saturated second-order nonlinear interactions in dispersion-engineered nanowaveguides. The technique developed here broadens the interacting harmonics by forming stable bifurcations of the pulse envelopes due to an interplay between phase-mismatch and pump depletion. We first present an intuitive heuristic model for spectral broadening by second-harmonic generation of femtosecond pulses and show that this model agrees well with experiments. Then, having established strong agreement between theory and experiment, we develop scaling laws that determine the energy required to generate an octave of bandwidth as a function of input pulse duration, device length, and input pulse chirp. These scaling laws suggest that future realization based on this approach could enable supercontinuum generation with orders of magnitude less energy than current state-of-the-art devices.